Language Matters

To God I speak Spanish, to women Italian, to men French, and to my horse--German. says Jason Chamberlain.

Well, that is absolutely logical, we should talk to each other the way people understand. As for me I do not know Spanish but I talk to God, I do not know Italian but I do talk to women, I do know French a bit and talk to men, well, if they deserve, I do not know German but I do not have the horse, too. What languages do I know then? Well, Native Georgian, English and Russian. I might have known much more but... Never anything is late. (Calmed myself down)

And now, the reason why did I do this introduction, according to the SourceWire, West Midlands business linguistics business admits that On-the-ball companies need to take advantage of a fair wind to avoid missing a ‘staggering’ export opportunity.

Economic development and trends in general determine the success of our business, but is that all we need? No, seems we need to use the bridge of language to make the most of these opportunities, Sue Clarke, of PromoLingua, a Warwick-based language consultancy says.

Seems that one in five Midlands exporting businesses have lost business contracts abroad because of difficulties with language, says the National Centre for Languages.

But small and medium-sized firms are waking up to the value of using linguists to give them better prices, deliveries and profits.

Multilingual Sue, who speaks five languages, founded PromoLingua, http://www.promolingua.com/. It promotes language skills in business, and places multilingual professionals into the Midlands. It supplies linguists from Spanish to Mandarin.

She said: “It is worrying that 20 per cent of companies in the Midlands have lost orders because of export contracts not using the right language skills. “Solving this problem could make the difference to companies’ survival. It’s clear that there are financial benefits and sales opportunities that can be created abroad, so companies are screaming out for language skills.”

Tim Kelly, director at Richard Austin (Alloys) said: “Use of language skills cut the chains holding back our business, by freeing up our position on suppliers.

“Locating different suppliers meant we enjoyed better costs and a wider availability of materials, which lifted and improved our business.”

Sue said: “I helped to build relationships so that we had four suppliers rather than one, bring better prices and deliveries."People in business are also encouraging schools to promote the learning of languages. Using these skills in business is increasingly a benefit.”

A recent survey of British Chambers of Commerce discovered that 80 per cent of English exporters could not competently conduct business dealings overseas in even one foreign language.